


Borrowed Without Return

by grafitti



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: ...Technically, M/M, Markus does some thinking at night-time, Philosophy, Sharing a Body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-29 00:04:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15060713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grafitti/pseuds/grafitti
Summary: Sometimes, at night, Markus thinks about the junkyard and the bio-components he took to keep himself alive, and who they used to belong to. And then, he tells Simon.





	Borrowed Without Return

**Author's Note:**

> North, Josh, and Simon are all alive in this, and Markus never killed an android for a bio-component at the junkyard. Wrote this SUPER quickly, but there should be no errors.

Markus had his own room in Jericho. Most of the time it would double as a meeting room for him, Simon, Josh, and North to discuss android integration plans and Jericho redevelopment. It was a fairly large room, with little decoration except for two large potted plants and a picture of him and Carl on the wall. There was a bed in the corner, despite Markus not truly needing it when he went into sleep mode.

But it was there that he laid awake at night, listening to the silent Jericho nights, interrupted only by the internal sounds of his own body – the push of his synthetic spit whenever he moved his tongue, the quiet flow of thirium through his veins, and the nearly-imperceptible whir of body parts that belonged to someone else before him.

In the darkness of his room, Markus could barely make out the outline of his hand above him. Closing one optical unit lid, he looked through his blue replacement optical unit. The image was ever so slightly different from his green one, slightly sharper in focus – it would be something like astigmatism in humans. Who looked through this eye before him? Were they sent to scrap when they started to see the world for it's true colors? Were they deviant enough to understand why their eye might trail along the shining line of the horizon on the water, or find itself arrested by the soft crinkle in a old man's crow's feet? What about his audio processor? Did this ear lend itself to the woes of a young child? Did it hear denigration or praise from the human owner that spoke into it? Did the android to heard with this ear before him like music, or the soft tones of a precious person?

Markus tried not to think about these things around North or Josh – they were more practical. They wanted to focus on the redevelopment, the political lobbying and the consciousness/human experience updates that Kamski offered to their people. But Simon – Markus spoke his mind to him about his troubles the night previously, sitting under the stars on the edge of one of Jericho's many shipping containers.

“I took a pump regulator from a dead android when I was in the junkyard,” he told Simon. “I don't even know their name. Who's heart beat like this before it beat for me?” Did it scream in agony when he roared upon his escape from the junkyard? Did these body parts feel trapped inside him,  not belonging? Did humans think of this after being saved by an organ donor?

Simon was quiet, and looked down to their feet, which dangled over the ramshackle city below.

“But you remember them,” said Simon, finally meeting Markus' mismatched eyes with his own. “Even if you've never met them. It wasn't a simple grave robbery – you didn't pilfer without remorse or thought. You think about them – and... even if their parts aren't connected to their data anymore, their mind... I think you're doing the living for them.”

Markus huffed a little, and turned to hide his smirk from the blonde.

“They can see what I see, and hear what I hear?” asked Markus. Simon chuckled, shrugging good-naturedly before gently touching the tips of his fingers to Markus', their skin pulling back with a gentle shine as the edges of their senses blurred into each other.

“And feel what we feel too.” Simon pushed a hand to Markus' chest, and beneath the artificial shell of his chest, was the deep strum of a thirium pump regulator. _Ba-dump_. _Ba-dump_. And maybe he imagined it, but Markus swore that he could sense the swell of a soul in his heartbeat.

 

 


End file.
